


Called, I Answer

by lynndyre



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Fealty, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-25
Updated: 2014-10-25
Packaged: 2018-02-22 13:01:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2508788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lynndyre/pseuds/lynndyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aragorn heals Faramir and calls him back to himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Called, I Answer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Empy (Empyreus)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Empyreus/gifts).



Faramir walked. About him was an empty plain, the horizon fading in all directions into a thin grey mist that rose from the desiccated earth, and held no moisture. Faintly, and far away, there were the shapes of great mountains, three peaks standing out from the rest. Black thoughts, of his father, of the war, of Boromir's loss, became as circling birds, seeking the carrion he would soon become. He remembered cold that chilled him through even as fire leapt up around him. He had no need to remember pain, for that was constant. 

Smoke trickled outwards from the cracked ground, snaking insubstantially about his feet, pulling at his ankles. If he remained, the ground would pull him down.

And so he walked. The dust was not unmarred, though it showed no imprint of Faramir's feet - the footmarks it held were of other things, tracks unlike any he had ever learned or seen as a Ranger. Some were larger than a man's, impossibly so, but malformed, and with uneven stride. Some were smaller. Some bore other marks besides the pads of a foot, or the imprint of a boot, human feet with clawed nails, or hooves that were not the hooves of any horse or beast of burden known to Gondor.

The mountains drew closer. Far away he began to see figures, shapes of other things. They were not men, nor elves, nor even orcs. Some seemed as wraiths, some bore twisted wings, some ranged half like men and half like wolves, bodies constantly shifting. Their faces were masks of pallor and torment, but he could not see clearer.

When he moved forward, the mist swirled higher, and the shapes vanished behind the fog, only to creep forward again in the corners of his vision.

His footsteps made little sound, as though the land itself devoured all evidence of life. In the farthest reaches of his sight, a wolfen creature flung back its head and howled, but no sound reached Faramir's ears. Whatever this place, each being's torment was its own. 

The silence closed in, until Faramir was conscious of every breath of his body, every loud and thudding beat of his heart.

The cold deepened further, until the mist of his own breath mingled with the fog of the mist-ridden plain and he felt the chill creeping and coiling in his gut and in his spine. He thought to make a fire, if any wood could be found in this desolation, but was struck through with the pain of his father's condemnation, and the memory of flames. His steps faltered, and from the grey vapours before him streached out the twisted, dry arms of the dead Tree of Gondor.

The foremost branch shivered at an unfelt wind, and cracked full through to the trunk. Every sharp snap of sound threatened and cut at what remained of Faramir's composure, as the tree broke itself apart before him. A cold fire sprung up in the center of the fallen wood, and it burned away into the haze, leaving only empty dust once more. Faramir's knees gave way.

He bowed his head, and the mists rose up.

In the distance, growing closer, the three mountain peaks blurred into an icy fortress before the sun, into the icy cold of Angmar in the north, into the single summit of Orodruin. Faramir saw them not. 

Behind him, where he knelt, the mist thickened, rolled like water, and receded as the tide, and sunlight touched the bare plain. And he heard a voice call his name.

He pushed again to his feet, though he swayed, turning, and the other man came closer, reaching out to him. Faramir's fingers were slow to unbend, but his rescuer was warm, and Faramir clasped his forearm gladly.

He wore the stained garb of a ranger, worn and tended and fought in, worn far harder than Faramir's own men. But if his clothes spoke of hardship, his grip spoke only of strength, and his eyes-

Oh, his eyes.

There was within Faramir a yearning to fall once more to his knees, not in despair, but in fealty. He had ever known himself to be the weakest of his House, of the Stewards, but never before had he felt so utterly mastered. Never had he understood so surely where his allegiance belonged.

The plain was a dark limbo, filled with wraiths and half-beings and illusions and the dying, but his king shone in his eyes like the sun, and his feet that had wandered pathless could not help but know the way.

He breathed the clean air. There was a scent, now, beyond the empty dusty nothingness, a smell of morning, and dew, of sunlight without shadow and spring without stain.

Faramir lifted his face to the light, and felt the world move around him. Fog and dust were washed away, and the empty despair gave way to bodily pain, and the warm comfort of touch. He felt... tired. Cleansed. Weak. 

He blinked against the heaviness of his eyelids, and looked up into the face of his savior. With the eyes of the flesh, his king no longer shone so brightly, but Faramir felt the force of his spirit all the same. It washed over him in healing, in claiming, in a fierce protective love.

How could he fail to answer?

“My lord, you called me. I come. What does the king command?”


End file.
